


begin again

by taylortot



Series: the way i love you [11]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Early Mornings, Established Relationship, Kissing, Late at Night, M/M, Post-Canon, everyone gets to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-22 20:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23566960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylortot/pseuds/taylortot
Summary: in which there's happiness, and a homecoming
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: the way i love you [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1189551
Comments: 76
Kudos: 674





	begin again

**Author's Note:**

> i'm. really emotional about this one. they get to be happy. everyone gets to be alive and HAPPY. i didn't really mention anyone else, but allura and coran are happy on new altea and pidge and hunk are both at home with their families and life is good. there's nothing really explict in this one but there is A LOT of implied sex lmao.
> 
> thanks for your patience, thanks for reading, i love you all, i hope you like this next part <3

Keith’s chest heaves with exertion as he comes down from his high, face buried into the crook at Lance’s neck. His heart kicks like a heavy bass line at his throat, slowing now, easing back into a normal cadence. Beneath him, Lance is slick and hot and breathless, pressing sweet kisses into Keith’s shoulder, his neck, his hair, his ear lazily, one hand settled against his spine, thumbing at a little knick of a scar. 

“Holy shit, I needed that,” Lance murmurs, voice ruined, against the cut of Keith’s jaw, the ridge of his scar.

Keith immediately erupts into laughter right there into Lance’s throat, his whole body shaking from the force of it, trembling twice as hard when Lance clutches at his back and laughs, too. He pulls back far enough to see him, lifts a hand to brush all the sweaty hair back from Lance’s face, grinning wide. Lance smiles back up at him, mirth lingering around the dreamy expression on his face.

“It has been a while,” Keith says, brushing his thumb over the ridge of Lance’s eyebrow. At least a month, probably longer. There hadn’t been time among all the meetings, the debriefs, the international media attention. The _interviews_ , the parades, the seven hundred different ceremonies gifting each soldier seven hundred different medals. The hospitalization to ensure a clean bill of health. The Garrison had new rules, new curfews. The Restoration was still in full swing. Their schedules had been staggered for almost everything. And no one ever said that being a hero would require so much damned paperwork. 

A crease folds between Lance’s eyebrows. “It was good though, right? I was good?”

Keith grunts in incredulity. He has to stare at him for a few stunted moments to be sure that Lance is being serious. “You’re still asking me that? Really?”

The flush of exertion, nearly faded on Lance’s cheeks, blooms fresh again. “Like you said! It’s been a while! I don’t know--”

Keith kisses him hard. He runs a rough hand through Lance’s damp hair. “It’s always good with you. _Always_. Jesus, Lance.”

Lance surrenders to that and hums happily in satisfaction when Keith comes close for another kiss and then another kiss and then another. “You should tell me more often,” Lance suggests into one kiss, and the one that follows it. “Or I’ll keep forgetting.”

That makes Keith sigh, feeling indulgent when he tips Lance’s head back further into the pillow and swipes his tongue across a bitten-red lip. “I’ll tell you as much as you’d like,” Keith murmurs, all air and hot breath and Lance makes a pleased sound. He tries to think back, wondering if he hadn’t doled out as much praise as was deserved, but his head is already fuzzy from the deepening ardor of Lance’s kisses.

“Good.” Lance slings an arm around Keith’s neck, his thumb still stroking a little pattern against Keith’s back. He gentles beneath Keith’s weight, peppering lighter kisses around all the edges of Keith’s mouth. “By the way, you were okay, I guess. In case you were wondering.”

Keith’s loud, answering groan is met with a burst of giggles from Lance, that pitch up into full on laughter as Keith pulls away and rolls off the bed.

“No, wait! Please come back, I’ll be nice!” Lance cries out, still laughing, clutching at his stomach. “Baby, it’s cold! I’m sorry; come back! That was _the best_ \--”

“Shut up, Lance,” Keith says from the bathroom as he grabs a towel and runs it under the faucet. He can’t help but smile to himself while Lance is still out there in their bed, though, howling through another fit of laughter. He used to go days without hearing Lance laugh. It had made Keith upset, when he thought about it, that the universe could rob Lance of his laughter, of his joy, that even the simplest pleasures during the last several months of war weren’t enough to make him happy. Their burden was too heavy, every day more unpredictable than the last.

So Keith listens to him now from the next room over, giggling at nothing and no one but himself and his own jokes, for his own sake. Keith stands there with the wet rag dripping in his hand, the hot desert sun slicing through the tiny frosted glass window to warm his shoulder. He looks at his reflection in the mirror, at the bruises low on his neck, his own eyes clear, the corners of his mouth curved up in an involuntary smile. Lance sighs loudly, tripping over a shorter bout of mirth. Keith is flushed. His hair is a mess. His heart is warm, his belly warmer. Has happiness ever felt this good before? Has it ever been so pure or true or present?

Once Lance has quieted, called his name, Keith steps back through the door and into their room, crossing to the bed with the towel in his hand.

Lance looks so self-satisfied sprawled out over the pillows, even against the dull backdrop of the papery, Garrison standard-issue bed sheets. The sun tries to reach him from the slit window in the corner of the tiny room, but he glows golden and lovely without it, sweat dewy on his skin, jeweled eyes half-lidded with lingering pleasure. Keith has never in his life fervently thought anyone or anything so beautiful as Lance in this moment. He is a gilded homecoming. He is an answered prayer. 

“Hey,” Lance says, rubbing at one eye. “What are those eyebrows for? You know I was teasing you.”

“I love you,” Keith tells him. “And you’re hilarious.”

Lance beams. His cheeks deepen with color and he rolls onto his side, propping his head up with a cupped hand. “Tell me more.”

*

Everyone on the Voltron and ATLAS teams are technically forced into a six week vacation after the whirlwind of their return and their victory. Terms and conditions of their further positions at the Garrison are to be discussed but only after they take a much needed--much deserved--break. 

Keith feels somewhat lost without the strict routine he’s become so accustomed to, unused to the quiet notion of waking up slow and meandering about his day with zero urgency. It’s not that he doesn’t like it, it’s just that it’s new and strange. It makes him feel a bit clumsy and unsure, something that he hasn’t dealt with since the early days of the war, but it doesn’t stress him out like it used to.

In fact, after the first few days, he slips into the non-routine routine more easily than he anticipated. Probably because those first few days are spent wearing little to no clothing on a double bed at the far end of the barracks, with Lance clinging to him greedily, desperately, as though to make up for all their lost time.

“I can’t believe this is real,” Lance whispers one night, a thigh slung over Keith’s hips, face tucked against Keith’s throat. His hands are still for once, one of them clasped in one of Keith’s, fingers tangled, laid out over a pillow.

“What do you mean?” Keith whispers back, his free hand tracing the dip of Lance’s spine at his lower back.

“I mean...this feels like some sort of alternate reality, doesn’t it?”

“You and me?” Keith asks, still unsure what he’s trying to get at.

Lance snorts. “Baby, I love you more than life itself, but that novelty has worn off. I can wrap my head around the fact that you’re mine just fine, thank you.”

“There’s no novelty in this?” Keith presses on a little smugly, his hand slipping much further down to grip at the swell of Lance’s ass. 

Lance rips his hand away and swats at his chest, but he laughs out loud. “That’s not what I meant and you know it!” He props himself up on an elbow, looking down at Keith now, his hair silvered by a faint patch of moonlight that stretches its way into their little room. He’s grinning, so worry-free that Keith fears he could just float away on the desert breeze drifting in through the window. Keith tightens his grip, cheeky, and Lance scoffs again, but takes Keith by the chin and kisses him hard.

“What did you mean then?” Keith asks when he pulls away. 

Lance brushes the hair back from Keith’s face. “I mean, our ridiculous, _insane_ marathon sex _is_ part of it, but like...in the way that I get to fall asleep with you naked because we’re not worried about the alarms going off in the middle of the night. Or the way that we can spend hours and hours and hours together without being pulled in different directions.” He lays down beside Keith again, up on the pillow this time, and Keith keeps his eyes on Lance’s face, trying to make out his expression in the dark. “I dreamed about this for so long. I don’t even know how to process that it’s happening.”

Keith immediately understands. “You’re happy.”

Lance laughs. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

That earns him a kiss.

“Nothing else matters right now,” Lance whispers against his mouth, light as a breath of laughter, light as early dawn. A smile crests in his voice like an ocean wave. “Can you believe it? Nothing else matters.”

Keith wraps an arm snug around Lance’s waist and rolls onto his side. “I love seeing you like this,” Keith murmurs, his voice just a rumble in his chest. He reaches up and cups Lance’s neck, lacing his fingers through the waves of his messy hair. “Love hearing you like this.”

Lance hums and kisses him again, curling his fingers against Keith’s bare chest. Keith responds by deepening the kiss, going mad with how willing and pliant Lance is, with how every single point of contact between them is full of joy and warmth and love and none of the constant fear that used to lurk in the corners when they were like this. It makes him ravenous and he doesn’t understand. How many times will it take for him to feel like he’s had enough? How long until this desire becomes less of a need and more of a want? 

His hands turn firmer when Lance pushes Keith onto his back and climbs on top of him, straddling his hips, pulling away from Keith’s mouth with a wet sound, hovering over him with his eyes closed. Keith grips at his thighs, obsessed with the heat of him, the weight of him.

“What do we do now?” Lance whispers sweetly, slowly opening his eyes into muddled slits, his face high with a blush that Keith can only feel in the space between them. Lance shifts his hips slightly, but it’s enough; Keith lets out a low sound, his hands searching for and fitting perfectly against Lance’s waist. He feels like a teenager, giddy and careless and stupidly horny.

“Be happy, I guess,” Keith murmurs, pulling Lance back down to him.

Lance’s smile is evident when it presses against the corner of Keith’s mouth.

*

He takes Lance home.

Krolia is invited--she hadn’t had much of a chance to meet Lance’s family during the war--and Keith has never seen her so out of sorts. He can’t help but tease her about it while they’re loading up the cruiser that they have clearance to use for their trip, and she’s completely unamused which really only makes Keith enjoy the whole thing more.

He invites Shiro, too, but he’d apparently already made plans with Curtis which also happens to include some of the other senior officers he’d grown close to on their second stint in space. Shiro seems excited about it, grinning from ear to ear, and Keith can’t remember a time in his life, ever, that Shiro had seemed so happy about anything. It makes him so grateful that he doesn’t even bother to tease Shiro about it. 

Veronica is there with them every step of the way, of course, and Keith is glad that he can hold conversations with her without any real awkwardness. He doesn’t always know what to say, but it’s okay because she’s a McClain and the ability to talk for long minutes without breaking a sweat runs in the family. Kosmo turns out to be a great talking point, and he loves the attention.

Even though both Lance and Veronica had been on video calls every day since returning home, the reunion at their family home itself is as teary-eyed as it was the first time they’d come back to Earth. Only this time, Kosmo and then Krolia, and then Keith are all dragged into the circle of endless hugs and warm questions asking after their well-being. Long before they’d gone back out into space, Keith had been introduced to the McClains as Lance’s boyfriend. Seeing them now, feeling their relief at not only Lance’s health but his too, gives him a sense of utter belonging he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Lance’s mother oozes warmth and love, kissing Keith on his cheeks, holding him tight. She tells him how glad she is that he’s safe. She tells him thank you for bringing her son back home. His heart is so full he feels like crying, eyes prickling with unshed tears.

Once the general, blessed mayhem has calmed a bit, Keith finds her again in the corner of the living room watching her husband talking easily to Krolia a few paces away, hands wrapped around a hot mug of coffee. From the far end of the room, he can hear Lance’s laughter laced through with conversation between him and his siblings, and he understands what Lance had meant about the other night. About not believing any of this could possibly be real.

“You look like a man on a mission,” Lance’s mother comments, slightly teasing, as Keith stops beside her. 

He has his hands shoved deep in his pockets to keep them from hanging awkwardly at his sides. “Sort of.”

“Did you need something, _mijo_?” 

Keith swallows his nerves, shoves them down to the very pit of his stomach where they cannot shake his voice apart. He leans against the wall beside her and casts a long look at Lance, glowing like a solar flare as he talks earnestly with his nephew, who holds Lance’s hands in his and keeps shaking them in excitement. Lance must sense Keith’s gaze; he looks up, catching Keith’s eye, and offers up a bright smile that seems to linger for ages before turning back to Sylvio. 

Keith loves. Oh god, how he _loves_. 

He clears his throat to ensure clarity and conviction when he looks back at Lance’s mother and speaks, his face hot with a blush, his heart bruising his ribcage as it swells and jumps and sings in his chest. 

“There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  
  



End file.
